


Imaginary Friends

by amelia_petkova



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Minor Character(s), Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amelia_petkova/pseuds/amelia_petkova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to Tyler after episode 2x11 ("Playthings").</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imaginary Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Supernatural.

Tyler Thompson isn't allowed to read ghost stories. Her mother says that they're a bad influence and buys her a copy of _Little Women_. When she's eight years old, she and her mother moved from the Pierpoint Inn to a house less than a year old, with modern furnishings, no attic, and no pool. Nobody has died there. She's not allowed to bring her doll house.

#

When Tyler is twelve, she learns to swim. Her mother has to force Tyler into doing it—she's avoided water ever since she nearly drowned in the pool at the inn right before they moved away. She _knows_ that it happened but doesn't remember it well. All the reason her mother gives for the lessons is, "It's good to know how to swim, just in case."

The instructor at the youth center physically leads her into the pool, like making a cat take a bath. The first time, she refuses to leave the shallow end. The instructor cajoles her and says, "There's nothing in the water that can hurt you," but Tyler doesn't budge.

Each night the following week, she has nightmares of that day when she was little. Somebody pushes her into the pool and she gets tangled up in the plastic cover. A hand pushes her down, and down, and down. Right before she wakes up, somebody else pulls her out. She can't remember his face.

She doesn't run to her mother's bed, like she does after every other nightmare. She stays in her room, not wanting to see that pained look on her mother's face.

Each time during the nightmare, the little girl is the one who pushes her in.

#

Tyler had an imaginary friend when they lived at the inn. She was a little girl just her size, with curly hair. They had the same eyes. The girl was called Maggie. They played with Tyler's doll house and made up stories about the people living in it. Then her friend went away and her mother made them move.

#

By the end of the week, she's just annoyed. She says, "Enough," when she wakes up, tangled in the sheets and her pillow thrown off the bed.

The next day is her second swimming lesson. She jumps in and goes to the deep end with the other students, pulling themselves hand over hand along the wall. She slips underwater many times but always rises. The water tastes like chlorine and she feels sick from swallowing too much of it, but she learns to swim. She dogpaddles, does the butterfly, floats, treads water, and dives. She stops dreaming about the little girl.

After the course ends, she joins her middle school's swim team.

#

  
During Tyler's freshman year at the University of Connecticut, her English teacher tells the students to write an essay about a family member. She decides to write about her maternal grandmother. When she talks with her mother on the phone that week, she doesn't mention the assignment.

Tyler knows that her grandmother's name was Rose; she grew up at the inn, had a stroke, and died of a heart attack.

The obituary and family history websites give her a little information. She writes down relatives' names. She's able to find out technical information about Rose: birth date, education, and marriage. In any other situation she would have to ask her mother for more information, but Tyler has a car and a map.

She leaves campus on a Friday morning. Her friends tease that she's sneaking away to visit a secret boyfriend. Tyler laughs and says she'll show their pictures to his friends.

Nobody in town recognizes the little girl who's now a decade older and over a foot taller. She rents a room in a shabby motel, with a mini fridge and no family antiques.

The Pierpoint Inn is still there; she realizes that she was afraid that it would have been torn down and a Wal-Mart built over the remains. Instead, it's been made into a museum. The door to the swimming pool is blocked off.

All the furnishings are still there. She doesn't give anything away, doesn't tell the staff that she used to live there. Anyway, there are only old photographs: nothing to tie the visiting undergraduate to the little girl who flew paper airplanes from the top of the staircase.

She's the only visitor that afternoon and asks about the family. The tour guide points out the photos of generations of the Thompson family still on the walls. Tyler finds one of Rose as a child. In the photo, Rose is standing next to another little girl. It's the imaginary friend from Tyler's dreams, right down to the pale curls and dimple in one cheek.

"Who's that?" she asks.

"Maggie Thompson," the guide says. "She and Rose were twins but Maggie drowned in the pool as a child. Another child almost drowned some years later; we closed that part off before the museum started taking visitors."

"Oh."

The tour ends shortly. On a whim, Tyler signs the guestbook before leaving.

She finds Rose's grave in the town cemetery. The tombstone next to it reads, "Maggie Thompson, Beloved Daughter." Her imaginary friend was her great-aunt, who played with Tyler and once tried to kill her so that they would always be friends. In the end, all she knows is that her grandmother died at the same time she was dragged from the water.

#

Tyler returns to school the next morning and finishes the essay. At the end, she writes, "Dedicated to Maggie."


End file.
